Sound of Freedom surprised the pundits – certainly the liberal elite pundits - by succeeding rather more than expectations.
Some weeks it out-grossed far more prestigious titles like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One.
There must be more to it than simply a less cumbersome title?
Photo: Supplied
All the headlines are about how well Sound of Freedom slots into the current culture wars in the United States – from the presence of religious right figures like producer Mel Gibson and star Jim Caviezel, to the theme of child sex-trafficking, which chimes with the paranoia of the Internet’s lunatic fringe.
Certainly star Caviezel has been pushing the film firmly towards the QAnon fan-base. It’s even been championed by Donald Trump of all people.
Whatever you may think of the film, its unconventional marketing strategy is clearly working.
Obviously I have no way of knowing how accurate the background to Sound of Freedom is, or even how reliable a picture it paints of the real-life Tim Ballard.
I gather the story has been tweaked considerably for dramatic effect, and the actual child-slave situation is far more complicated than the simplistic, stranger-danger scenario described here.
But it’s a movie, not a crusading documentary – even if it sometimes claims to be. We meet heroic Tim Ballard –Caviezel - tirelessly tracking down pedophiles and rescuing children for US Homeland Security.
One day Ballard learns of a particular case – a very young brother and sister taken from their happy home in Honduras, then whisked off to the jungles of Colombia.
The reason Ballard is involved is that, notoriously, the vast majority of the clients of these child-smugglers are American pedophiles.
Ballard ropes in the assistance of a reformed criminal called Vampiro, played by the best thing in the film, respected character actor Bill Camp.
Rather than trying to track down the child smugglers, Ballard and Vampiro set up a scheme to attract them. They’ll set up a private sex-club, with the aid of a tame multi-millionaire.
And surprisingly, this bit actually happened, though it was entirely a Colombian initiative, rather than the work of a couple of heroic Americans.
The sex club scam was a success, though the little girl Ballard was chasing remains a prisoner deep in the Amazon jungle.
When Ballard decides to rescue her, he falls foul of his boss who reminds him foreign enterprises aren’t part of his job description. But he’s encouraged by his equally heroic wife, Mira Sorvino, who urges him to let freedom ring.
When you’re faced with a film called Sound of Freedom, you’re reminded how much that loaded word has changed over the years, and how much we associate it with a certain type of right-wing ideology.
In this case, it also means freedom from the actual facts – from the misleading, early shots of innocent kids being snatched in the street by criminals, to Ballard’s entirely fictional rescue mission to find one child in the heart of Colombia.
In addition, at the end of the film Caviezel pops up as himself urging audiences to buy more tickets for friends and family.
In this way they’ll draw attention to the cause and the film, which he modestly compares to books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin as one of the most important works in history.
The director of Sound of Freedom, Mexican Alejandro Monteverde, clearly went along with this hard-sell by his star, though he’s subsequently expressed some discomfort at Caviezel’s more extreme politics.
I assume he’s happy enough with the film’s unlikely success though - success, I might add, that owes very little to any intrinsic quality. It’s Rambo without the political nuance, essentially.
